


The Space Around Me

by QueenRiza



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Family Dynamics, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Niall's Death, Pre-Slash, Ronsey, Siblings, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-30 23:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17232971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenRiza/pseuds/QueenRiza
Summary: "The fall after Ronan and Gansey had become friends, the summer before Adam, they’d spent half their free time hunting for Glendower and the other half hauling junk out of the second floor."- The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater





	The Space Around Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jupitired](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jupitired/gifts).



_“We never went back._

_But I remember his weight_

_better than I remember_

_my first kiss.”_

_—_ At Pegasus _, Terrance Hayes_

 

Gansey handles school registration himself. It’s very straightforward, and he’s done it often enough. At this point, he’s been to enough prep schools that he has a perfected answer for any possible question on an application—and enough money in his monthly allowance to quell any objections that might come to mid-year transfers. This isn’t to say his family doesn’t play a vital role in the process. His mother promptly faxes back the now-signed paperwork he had forwarded to her, and he has to argue with his father about attending Aglionby over another Virginia prep school his father’s friend sends his children to. It’s only an hour away and in a, as his father said, “far more tasteful neighborhood,” but an hour out means an hour further from the ley lines, something which Gansey feels would defeat the entire purpose of his being here.

They don’t visit the school while he’s making his choice though, and they’re not there to help him move in. Helen offers to fly in, if only to have a look at the surrounding real estate to make sure that the old abandoned factory Gansey has purchased is really the best to be found in the local market, but it’s not necessary. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see his family, or that they don’t want to see him, but it’s better this way. The last time they saw him, he disappeared from Mallory’s place in the UK a few months later. There’s no way to avoid the awkwardness of addressing that. They hadn’t addressed it when Gansey, after a month of absence, made contact with them once again in the form of forwarding them a link to Aglionby’s website and a declaration of intent to finish his sophomore year there, and it’s only good sense to wait until any feelings on that particular bit of unpleasantness die down before meeting with them again. It’s best for everyone involved.

Aglionby, Gansey reflects as he pulls into the school’s parking lot, in many ways leaves much to be desired. It has wealth and prestige certainly, but in a somewhat gauche new-money way. Gansey’s last school was a UK boarding school established in the 1700s that hosted the sons of great thinkers and second cousins of royalty, united by ancient shared customs and a thirst for knowledge. Aglionby, Gansey observes as he walks to the administrative office, has a library that was built in the 1970s with money donated by the CEO of an international gas company. It hardly matters though, because Gansey intends to only be here for a few months until the school year ends and he can see his way a bit into summer, when he can pack up and move onto his next clue, the next site of his quest.

He’s given his class schedule by a bored receptionist and is about to be on his way until the headmaster walks in and offers to give him a tour of the school himself—clearly his father’s donation to the school library hasn’t gone unnoticed. Headmaster Child is slightly too eager, slightly too open about being pleased to have Gansey attending that it goes beyond flattery and seems more like a man out of his depth, but Gansey welcomes the conversation and approval from authority. He prods him a bit for the history of the area, some indication of unusual happenings or lore only privy to those local that might spell out Glendower, but Child simply laughs off any of Gansey’s questions with a comment on the admirable nature of his interest, and vaguely indicates that the school library might be of some help. Gansey doubts it—he’s scoured university libraries from around the world and rare texts politely borrowed from prestigious collectors, so the likelihood of finding anything new is small. He will, of course, still check. He’s never been one to bypass any possibilities.

Not long after, Child hands him off to a fellow student, Henry Cheng, who Child assures him is also a recent transfer and already a deeply vital part of the Aglionby community.

“Child is just saying that so I will get off his ass,” Cheng says with a grin. Before anything else, Gansey notices his very impressive hair, piled on top of his head higher than Gansey had ever known gel could carry it. “Did you know this school doesn’t have a student council? And totally disregards most the recommended environmental regulations. Not to throw you in too soon, but would you be interested in doing something about that? Climate change affects us all you, know.” Before Gansey can distinctly and politely not comment with his family’s opinion on the existence of climate change, Cheng says “Great hair by the way,” which Gansey isn’t sure whether he can take as a compliment or not, coming from Cheng.

Cheng looks through his schedule for him—they have APUSH together, which Cheng calls a waste of time because he’s Canadian—and dutifully walks him through all the options he has for clubs and extracurriculars. Gansey hasn’t had much time for club meetings what with his own research, other than signing his name on multiple low participation honor societies, but he picks up a flyer for the rowing team anyway. Cheng slaps him familiarly on the back and calls him an athlete and pillar of American society, and Gansey finds him taking a strange liking to Henry Cheng, despite not quite knowing how to respond.

Cheng leads him to his first class, Latin, before heading off himself to AP Bio. He even introduces him to another boy in the class, called “Cheng2” (though Gansey observes that he really doesn’t look like someone whose last name would be Cheng), before moving on. Gansey is charmed by the concern for his wellbeing and doesn’t tell Cheng that’s it’s wasted on him. Gansey has had enough practice and natural skill to have long mastered weaving his way into new social circles.

“Richard Campbell Gansey?” asks the bored, surprisingly young looking teacher (Gansey glances at his schedule to learn that his name is Barrington Whelk, and for the first time in his life feels grateful for his own name) while making a note on his attendance sheet.

“Just Gansey,” Gansey tells him. Whelk offers him an unimpressed look, doesn’t bother writing down this new information, and tells him “You’re going to need to change seats. Just because Rutherford is absent again doesn’t mean his seat is up for grabs.” Gansey thinks this is a bit unfair, given that Henry was the one that placed him here and Gansey doesn’t even know who Rutherford is, but Whelk quickly shuffles him to an empty desk on the other side of the room.

“There’s a spot next to Lynch,” he says.

* * *

“That’s not what fucking happened,” Ronan says, at the same time Matthew declares from the backseat, “Mom said you’re not supposed to use that word!” and Declan says, “Oh, so now I’m a liar. Do I look like I’m shitting you?” Matthew admonishes Declan too, but he’s not very serious about it and neither of his brothers pays him any heed.

“Yes,” Ronan answers, though not particularly seriously, and Declan rolls his eyes, though not particularly seriously. “I got my license months ago, so Dad’s not going to care about anything else. He has to like, respect the law or whatever.”

Both brothers exchange a look for just a moment, unnoticed by Matthew, silently saying… something, perhaps questioning when Niall Lynch has ever bothered respecting the law. At this point, Ronan has already seen his father dreaming, realized the perhaps illegitimate ways Niall makes his money, but since Declan has no way of knowing about any of what their father does, he says nothing.

“You also almost ran over Matthew on his bike speeding down the front drive at 100 mph right after your test, so yeah, I’m driving us to school.”

Ronan huffs and kicks his feet up onto the dashboard. It’s an argument that they’ve found themselves having most mornings, as much a part of their routine as eating breakfast or arguing over Declan getting the smell of hair gel all over the bathroom, but one Ronan has been bringing up with increased frequency as his sophomore year comes to a close and it becomes more and more frustrating to be chauffeured by his older brother each day.

Racing through the hills and valleys surrounding Singers Falls and into town on the weekends hasn’t been bad, and Niall  told Ronan that if he managed to get to the end of the school year without incident, he would get his driving privileges back, and a new car by the time the next school year rolled around. The real problem is that it’s unfair. For all Ronan loves him, Niall Lynch has never been the most present parent, and Ronan has grown used to discipline meaning Aurora admonishing him and then forgetting, or Declan lecturing him if he did something really stupid. It seems like a grand, cruel plan from the universe that his dad would have waited for something important to try to teach Ronan a lesson about responsibility.

Besides, Ronan has heard his parents talking, and he knows that the Volvo was originally supposed to be his before the whole Crashing-The-Car incident, when they opted to give it to Declan instead.

So unfair.

The Volvo come to a halt in the Aglionby parking lot, and Ronan prepares to grab his backpack and dash out the passenger’s side as usual when Matthew declares suddenly, “Wait! How do exponents work?”

Ronan and Declan both look back at Matthew, who is staring into his backpack in distress.

“Are you just doing your Math homework now?” Declan sighs.

“I forgot about it last night,” Matthew says, his eyes wide and imploring. Both of them believe him without question; Matthew misplaces and recollects memories and obligations as easily as stray socks.

“Let me see it,” says Ronan, reaching over for the paper. “What period do you have Math?”

Declan intercepts it on its way to Ronan’s hand. “I’ll take that,” he says. “You’re barely getting a B in CP Pre-Calc.”

Ronan glares at him. “Matthew’s not taking Pre-Calc.”

“Okay, what did you get in 7th grade Math then?”

“I’m just trying to help, asshole.” Ronan steps out of the Volvo before flipping Declan the bird. The comment hardly actually bothers Ronan, and Declan knows it and flips him right back.

“And I said I’ve got it. Just don’t be late after school again.”

This is a tall order, Ronan thinks for what must be the thousandth time as he heads towards the building, since Ronan has to wait for Declan and Matthew to finish extracurriculars after school before they can all drive back to the Barns, and then he’s supposed to drop everything he’s doing (usually making occasional stabs at his homework in a park somewhere or behind the school gym trying some beers Joseph Kavinsky paid a homeless guy to buy) so he can run on their schedules when they won’t run on his.

He brought this up to his mother in the hopes that she would contest the driving rule with Niall, but she just told him that he should sign up for an extracurricular as well. He should have known better than to hope Aurora would argue with his father; he’s never seen his parents argue in his life and would probably be more devastated if they had on his behalf, but still, he was desperate. He did sign up for an extracurricular too, for what it was worth, but the Aglionby tennis team never even made it to the state quarterfinals, and Ronan dropped it once it was all just drilling and working out for the next season.

It’s not even that Ronan hates Aglionby, or that he hates school, it’s just that he doesn’t like it either. There’s always been a bitter contrast between being at home, where everything has always been games and family and animals and lush green scenery, and school, where he’s expected to put his nose down and work or care about the kind of thing Declan and his friends care about—politics and girls and fancy ties—when none of those things have ever meant anything to him in his own life, his real life. He’s just never found anything between those two places. He’s either at home, where he has everything, or Aglionby, where he has no one.

The first class of the day is Latin, which Ronan is good at, mostly because of its resemblance to the language he hears in his dreams. He feels like his sleeping life has been spent chasing half-truths, and these long sheets of verb forms appear to be one of them. He falls into his desk chair, mindlessly running over what he wants to do when he gets home, if he can talk Declan into letting him take the Volvo out into the forests past Singer’s Falls to try to do loops in the mountains. His distraction is ended, not by the usual bell, but by someone next to him.

* * *

Gansey can’t quite figure out Ronan Lynch, but he’s becoming more and more certain that he wants to.

As he has at every school, Gansey settles into Aglionby quite admirably. He learns the ins and outs of the campus, gets pulled into a group of athletic Virginia money—the upper echelon of Aglionby—and still checks in with Cheng and his buddies every so often. He learns the cliques, the important faces, the teachers who have good information on the history of this region and the teachers who are just willing to listen to him talk about it. Like every school, the cogs and wheels of Aglionby turn with an impressive precision that manages to fit Gansey right in as though he has always been a fixture of the school. Gansey imagines that in a few months they’ll move along as though he’d never been there at all.

The notable thing about Ronan is how poorly he seems to fit into this machine, how its gears clip and grind in an effort to make sense of him. Everyone in the school has their niches and groups, but Ronan manages to avoid being sucked in by the tennis team or the delinquents or the music kids, even though Gansey saw him in the tennis team photo in the administration’s office, and last week Ronan wore an old t-shirt from the Virginia Youth Irish Music Finals.

He also hasn’t realized Gansey is trying to be friends with him. Either that, or he really doesn’t want to become friends with Gansey. But Gansey hasn’t had much experience with the latter, so he assumes it must be the former.

“How did you find the homework?” Gansey says politely, like he does most days, as Ronan slides into his seat beside him. “I thought today’s was particularly hard.” Gansey has been disappointed to find that Aglionby’s standards are higher than he realized. The past few years, he’s managed to keep school a distant priority, but lately, he’s even had trouble going out to the library to do research.

Ronan closes his eyes for a moment, hard, and he briefly grabs his curly hair in frustration. “Shit. Homework, right.”

This is already routine by now, and Gansey finds himself bringing up the homework more and more often to just give Ronan some time to finish it before the bell rings. Sometimes Ronan will lean over and ask Gansey about a conjugation, but mostly he finishes it quickly, with a lazy ease that leaves Gansey staring.

But today Gansey says, “How do you do that?”

Ronan looks back at him suspiciously, like maybe he thinks that Gansey is accusing him of cheating. “What?”

“Not to be rude—” Gansey almost stops himself, because he almost certainly is being rude, but the words are already out, “but you don’t study, do you?” He decides to make it better by adding, “Not that you really need to, clearly,” and then winces a little because it really sounds like he’s kissing ass.

Ronan seems to think so too. He doesn’t get any more hostile though, now that this isn’t going to be a fight, and instead, he chews on his eraser. “Yeah, so?” Gansey doesn’t respond, and then Ronan adds, “I do for finals. You just haven’t been here for that yet. What do you care?”

“I don’t, I’m just impressed. This is probably my toughest class right now.” A big part of this is because Gansey is unable to catch a break with Whelk. Gansey has never had a teacher dislike him, so he’s sure that can’t be the case, but he’s definitely unable to incur the kind of favor that grants him privileges with other teachers, and feels that Whelks maybe a little too exacting with the grading. “And this is the school I’m finishing this year at, so these grades are going to be on my transcript for junior year. It’s a bit irksome.” Gansey immediately feels bad for complaining, but a little relieved to have said it out loud. With everything else going on, with the weight of his destiny and his quest, fretting over something trivial is nice to let out in the air.

Ronan doesn’t seem prone to sympathy, so Gansey is surprised when he seems to soften and says, “Oh come on, man. It’s because you had the shit luck to get Whelk as a teacher.” Whelk is definitely within earshot, so Ronan lowers his voice a little, but not by much. “I don’t know why he teaches here. My brother says he doesn’t even have his Masters, which is like, a school policy or something. Anyway, he makes it all harder to get than it is. I just normally skim the book during class instead of listening to him, and it’s all there.”

Gansey can’t help but smile. Maybe he might make a breakthrough with Ronan yet. “Maybe,” he says appreciatively. “I think our minds just work in different ways. Which is quite a normal thing with linguistics. I read a study about how—”

“Well, if you want—” Ronan blurts out, cutting Gansey off but then closing his own mouth just as quickly. He looks uncharacteristically embarrassed. “Sorry, uh—shit. I was just going to say that, I don’t know, if you are having trouble, and if you need someone to help you, then I probably could.” He scuffs his shoe against the side of the desk. “Like, whatever, either way.”

“Really?” Gansey can feel himself glowing. He coughs a little and pushes his palms into his desk. “I mean, yeah,” he says, in his deepest practiced voice. “That would be cool.”

* * *

Ronan doesn’t know what he was thinking. He barely even knows Dick Gansey as it is –the impossible golden boy, charming teachers and kissing ass since he first showed up at Aglionby, and bombarding Ronan with questions and small talk before class.

Ronan has never been anything to look at academically anyway; the only thing he has to offer is access to a language he has been born with a shaky understanding of. As soon as Gansey understands this, he’ll leave, and that’ll be just fine.

Gansey texts him, asking for confirmation of his address.

_—Google Maps is showing something very off-road. Is this the right place?_

Ronan texts back:

_—Yes_

And then:

_—How did you get my number_

He had purposely only given Gansey his address; the last thing he needed was more outside communication, letting Aglionby barrage him at all waking hours.

— _The student directory!_

Ronan groans, leaning down onto his bed and tossing his phone onto a cushion. Someone—his mother or Declan—probably filled out that particular bit of paperwork. His phone buzzed again.

_—You know, the forests around here are incredible! I didn’t know the country stretched this long. How well do you know this area?_

Ronan responds:

_—Aren’t you driving? Get off the phone_

Still, he can’t help but smile.

* * *

The door is opened by the most beautiful woman Gansey has ever seen, and for a moment, he’s certain he must be in the wrong place. The quaintly scattered barns look like children’s toys burst into full scale; the rolling and sloping greenery, and this woman—like a young queen from another time—are something out of a fairy tale. Gansey feels his chest surge. Maybe after years of searching, he’s finally stumbled on something right.

Her smiles. “You must be Ronan’s friend.”

He outstretches his hand. “I’m Gansey; I take Latin with him. And you must be… his sister?” This is almost impossible, actually. Despite her ageless glow, her clear skin, there was still that small crease in her brow, something nurturing that Gansey feels meant she couldn’t be as young as she seemed. Still, if he’s going to have to err one way or another, it’s usually better to be taken for cheeky rather than rude.

She laughs and it sounds like music, an expression Gansey has heard before but never really understood until now.

“Well, aren’t you charming? I’m his mother.” She looks nothing like Ronan, Gansey notices, aside from maybe the curl of her hair. “Ronan,” she calls. “Your little friend is here.”

“Okay, I’m coming, I’m coming,” comes a voice from upstairs, and Ronan Lynch’s sharp features and curly hair emerge. He seems to be attempting annoyance but not quite managing it. Gansey can’t blame him. He can’t imagine staying upset at Ronan’s mother for long.

Ronan looks at Gansey and then looks at anything that isn’t Gansey. “We can go to my room to study. Or the kitchen,” he adds.

Gansey shrugs amiably. “I’m sure either would be fine.”

Ronan nods. “Yeah, okay.” He motions for Gansey to follow him, but not before turning to his mother and saying, “Declan has a girl in his room by the way, and I’m pretty sure something gross is happening so you should probably, like, ground him.”

Mrs. Lynch laughs again and doesn’t seem to pay much attention.

It seems that Ronan has decided on moving upstairs, but he leads Gansey through the kitchen anyway, where they’re greeted by a chubby-faced boy with a mop of curls to rival Ronan’s own.

“Think fast,” Ronan calls from the fridge and chucks an orange in Gansey’s direction. His hand snatches it from the air easily—who’s to say all those years of private school Phys. Ed. didn’t come in handy for motor skill development? He’s not hungry, but the orange feels cool and rough in that oddly smooth way, so he picks at the peel anyway.

Ronan nods approvingly at him. “Nice catch.” He nods at the other boy as he sits in concentration over homework. “This is Matthew. Hey, Matthew.” The blonde curls look up with a slightly bleary look, “this is Gansey.”

Gansey travels in the right circles to be aware of Ronan’s other brother, Declan, the coolly handsome junior who led the Aglionby fencing team to state and heads the local Young Democrats chapter, but he doesn’t know this one.

“Hey!” Matthew says brightly, the bleariness wiped from his face. Gansey can see that Ronan’s mother at least passed down her features to one of her children. “What are you doing here? Ronan never has friends over.”

Ronan turns very pink and says “Shut up. What are you doing anyway?”

Matthew looks grim again. “Math homework. You said you could help me, right? What do you know about factorials?”

Ronan looks over Matthew’s shoulder onto the paper and grimaces. “Nothing, apparently. Make Declan help you.”

Matthew frowns. “I think he’s busy.”

Rona makes an exaggerated look of disgust. “Gross.”

Gansey, feeling awkward in this scene, has a look at the work as well. “Oh!” he says happily. “We were just reviewing this at my school in the UK before I left.”

He tries explaining it to Matthew as well as he can and soon enough the younger boy seems to understand it well enough himself. Gansey feels a surge of pride. He’s never liked math, but he has always liked helping people understand things. He’s been lucky enough to always be able to turn his words into real meaning, and it feels good to serve a purpose.

“UK school?” Ronan asks him as they head up to his room, examining Gansey. “You don’t seem British.”

Gansey laughs. “Nope, Virginia born and bred. But I’ve been doing a lot of traveling the past years and spent a lot of time in and out of the UK. Didn’t pick up the accent though,” he adds, a little disappointed.

“Thank God,” Ronan snorts, “you’d look like an ass.”

“Hey!”

Ronan grins at him and leads him into one of the upstairs rooms.

It exists like an explosion of boyhood, walls papered with posters for loud metal bands and louder cars, old gaming systems and older toys piled in the corners, laundry and old sheets of paper piled across desks and dressers.

Gansey appraises one of the posters as Ronan pulls out their Latin assignment, a steely sports car frozen mid-turn, its wheels pitching dramatically to one side with a haze of dust in its waste.

“So you like cars, huh?”

Ronan looks at the wall of posters. “Nah?”

“Ha-ha,” Gansey says in a deadpan. “What do you drive?”

Ronan’s face drops, rustling through old assignments irritably until he pulls out their most recent Latin tests. “A Volvo mostly. A BMW when my dad is home. But neither of them is mine.”

“Really?” Gansey is surprised. Any family with a country estate and three children in private school should be able to give their kid a sports car after their 16th birthday.

“I, uh,” Ronan waves his hand dismissively, “sort of got in a little accident after I got my license. Stupid bullshit. But it means my parents aren’t getting me my own car until August and I’m still stuck with my fucking brother driving me to school.”

Gansey’s not sure he disagrees with the choice not to give Ronan something giant and shiny to wreck, but it clearly means a lot to him, so he nods sympathetically.

“Anyway, what do you drive?”

“1973 Camaro,” Gansey says proudly. “It’s a recent purchase, picked up from a vintage collector in Maryland.”

“’73?” Ronan says incredulously and moves to the window to peer out into the front of the house. “That wreck?” he says. “It’s pretty, but it looks like my grandpa could have driven it in high school.”

Instead of correcting Ronan on his timeline, Gansey protests, “It’s a good car! They don’t make any really decent models these days. If you want, I can show you when we’re finished here.”

Ronan’s eyes light up. “Really? Screw that then; let’s look at it now! We can do homework later. You’re staying for dinner, right?”

Gansey blinks, not expecting this. A home-cooked dinner certainly sounds better than heating up another frozen pizza in the old manufacturing house he’s renovating. “Right.”

* * *

Gansey doesn’t let Ronan drive, but they haven’t known each other for very long, so he doesn’t mind too much, despite his itching desire to get behind the wheel. Maybe Gansey will let him drive it eventually.

Ronan has to begrudgingly agree with Gansey’s assessment—it is a good car. Sputtering and unreliable, yes, but shifting into a kind of speed Ronan has never achieved driving the Volvo through the mountains and the hills surrounding the farmland. Gansey takes it up the main road, up the hill that encloses the quiet kingdom of the Barns, and into the broad stretches of fields beyond. Ronan directs him a bit, through all the mountain lanes he’s spent the months since his 16th birthday memorizing, and even convincing Gansey to drive over the speed limit for a bit. They seem to talk about everything, calling to each other over the sound of the engine, and then about nothing, the scream of the engine and anxious rush of chill mountain air filling in all the places words can’t. It is a good car.

Eventually, the sun begins to hide behind the mountain tops, rays fingerpainting the sky with streaks of color. Gansey slows the car to a stop. They are alone here, so high above the world they could easily forget it but for the faint lights of Henrietta beneath them.

“We should go back,” Gansey says.

“Yeah,” Ronan replies.

Neither of them moves.

Ronan has driven these routes many times before, but never really stopped to look into the valley below. If he squints, he can see his home in miniature, a few brush strokes of a painting. He had never realized a thing he loved could be so beautiful when it was made so small.

“They look like figurines,” Gansey says thoughtfully. “It’s like a model town.”

The other boy is nearly a foot away, but Ronan is as aware of the palpitations of his heart as if his hand was pressed to his chest. Everything is in sync for a moment, like the second before the beat of a song drops or a heart monitor goes dead.

“So, why are you here anyway?” Ronan says, and the moment ends as safely as possible. “All the way from the UK. You don’t have family in Henrietta, right?” Very few in Aglionby do, coming from other states and shores to cluster here.

“My parents are just up in DC,” Gansey says, but that’s still far away so he continues. “I’m here for the same reason I was in the UK. And Wales before that. And Montana before that. I’m…looking for something.”

Ronan has to laugh at the vagueness. “Looking for what? Girls? Drugs? The Lost Ark?”

Gansey rolls his eyes and laughs, and then an expression Ronan hasn’t seen yet creeps over his face: a challenge. “Not quite. What do you know about Welsh kings?”

“Um… nothing.” It’s possible that Ronan has learned about them in school before, but if he did, he made a point of forgetting about it after the final. He knows a bit of the Welsh language, but that doesn’t seem to be what Gansey is looking for.

Gansey seems a little disappointed, but not very. “Not too many people do. But those who have maybe have heard of Glendower.”

And Gansey spins a fantastic story, worthy of even master storyteller Niall Lynch, about a place an ocean away from Henrietta, about kings and warfare and an invading country determined to bend one more region to their will. It’s a story about magic and the people who know it, people determined not to lose the place they love, so they hide their king in a place no one would think to look, as he sleeps, ready to give a favor to anyone willing to wake him.

“I think he’s here,” says Gansey, “I’ve been looking for so long, but I really think Virginia is the place.” He explains about old European artifacts found in Virginian soil and accounts of men who made to America long, long ago, but Ronan doesn’t need the historical proof. He’s lived with liars long enough to know when someone is telling the truth.

“How are you even planning on finding something like that? You don’t exactly have a team of archeologists.” Ronan isn’t actually sure about that last point. Given the people who attend Aglionby, it might not be too far off for the Ganseys to have professionals on the payroll to satisfy idle curiosity.

“Oh, that’s not exactly necessary,” Gansey says. “I’ve investigated plenty of sites on my own, and there are all sorts of equipment for picking up supernatural activity and the like.”

This is news to Ronan, and while he’s not exactly sure what he’s afraid of, worry begins to prickle at his stomach. He wonders just how much of that equipment points towards the Barns.

“But,” continues Gansey, “I am new here. It’s always more helpful to investigate a new area with the help of someone local.”

Ronan grins. “What? Leeching off of me in Latin isn’t good enough for you? You’ve got to worm into my weekends too?” But he presents a closed fist to Gansey and bumps it against the other boy’s. “Deal,” he says, “I want to see this king guy.”

Gansey grins at him, and it’s such a wide, hopeful grin, and Ronan feels something great and soaring and unknown begin to tug at his soul.

As they begin the descent down the mountain, twisting and turning toward the light-studded valley below, Ronan turns to Gansey.

“So if you get this favor,” he says, “What will you ask for?”

Gansey frowns. “I don’t know,” he says. “I just hope I will when the time comes.”

* * *

School’s remaining months seem to pass faster after that, and in a more comfortable routine. Ronan takes to Gansey’s quest more than Gansey had expected, and while he knows little of Glendower himself, he comes along on the long car rides with Gansey down the ley line, good-naturedly using whatever device Gansey put in his hand.

They spend more and more time together until they were hanging out essentially every day after school and every weekend. There are a few reasons for this. Gansey is still making lazy efforts at renovating Monmouth, and even with bringing in the occasional renovation crew, it’s still barely fit for habitation. Ronan still resents the wait after school to go home, so most days Gansey drives him back home to the Barns, where the two stay until it’s too late to justify. Other times, they wander around the broad spaces and loose rafters of Monmouth, hauling out old machinery or daring each other to climb into the tall, empty spaces no one should dare go.

It is a beautiful spring, a young spring, the kind Gansey has never really known for all the world he’s seen. Sleepovers in the rafters of one of the Lynches’ surrounding barns, rambling drives through forests while Gansey makes Ronan consult one of his old books, Gansey making Ronan do Latin homework and Ronan explaining how to do it, a place always set for Gansey at the Lynches’ dinner table; Gansey has had plenty of friends before, but none like this. The niggling thought occurs to Gansey that he has never really had a family before, not like this, but he couldn’t make sense of it, so he dismisses it.

Eventually, spring had come to a close, and summer would have to begin, but this could only open up more glorious time for them all, and so, on the last day of sophomore year, Gansey waits for Ronan in the Aglionby with even more euphoria than usual.

Gansey’s phone vibrates slightly, and he answers immediately to hear his father’s voice on the other end, smooth and pleasant.

“Dick!” he says as if he’s greeting an old college buddy. “Thought I would check in. How’s everything going down south?”

“Good,” Gansey replies amiably. “We just finished finals around a half hour ago. I feel pretty confident I did well.”

“Even Latin?”

“Even Latin. I got some help from a friend, remember?”

“Oh right.” He doesn’t remember, but Gansey doesn’t mind. As long as he finishes out with a good transcript, everyone will be happy. “Look, Dick, the reason I’m calling is that I ran into an old friend the other day—you remember the Parkers?”

Businessman husband, young Italian wife, horrible daughter, introduced at a charity event for AIDS—no, not AIDS—cancer, more presentable. “Of course,” says Gansey.

“Well, he’s been sending Melanie to this place by the coast that she just loves—co-ed, so a bit progressive, but they’re a big fan of it anyway. I took a look at the brochure, and honestly, I really think you’d get a kick out of it. Great history department.”

“Dad,” says Gansey, more harshly than he intends. “That sounds very nice, but I chose Aglionby for a reason.”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s still in Virginia, so you’d have plenty of time to pursue your interest on the weekends while studying with the best. It can’t be too far from those log lines.”

Gansey considers for a moment. He still feels bad about the disappearance, and this seems to actually mean something to his father. “I’ll think about it,” he says finally. “I still have the summer.”

“Alright, just let me know. And, uh, Dick,” his father hesitates, “come visit soon, huh? We miss you.”

“Of course,” Gansey says, and then in the distance sees Ronan’s approaching figure. “I’ve got to go, Dad. I’ll see you soon.” When he hangs up, he wonders how honest either of them really was.

“How was History?” he calls out to Ronan. This had been the final worrying Ronan the most, although he wouldn’t admit it, and it was the one that Gansey, with a not inconsiderable knowledge of the subject, had done his best to impart his knowledge of without Ronan realizing it, going on tangents about this or that US general whenever they turned down a street with a revolutionary name or a war film appeared on TV. It hadn’t taken long for Ronan to realize what Gansey was doing, though, and he quickly changed the subject each time.

“Piece of cake,” Ronan says with practiced bravado. “Who cares anyway, right? We’re free men—George Washington is the last thing I want to think about.”

The Camaro’s convertible roof is down, so Ronan pulls himself over the side into the passenger’s seat, feet kicked up onto the dashboard like Gansey has always hated. He looks like something out of an advertisement for cigarettes or an over-eager soda brand. His arms hang over the car’s side with an almost decadent cool, his grin so inviting yet thrilling that Gansey can hardly believe it’s real. He’s the movie’s bad boy romantic you root for while knowing the ingénue ought to reasonably go back to her accountant fiancé. Gansey is thoroughly charmed.

“Feet off my dash,” he says strictly, “and the doors are there for a reason.”

* * *

Today’s adventure takes them to a stretch of the woods they have already visited a few times previously. Along the ley line, Ronan and Gansey have already walked around it time and time again with electric doo-dads and metal detectors and obscure holy sticks. Nothing has happened as far as Ronan can tell, but every so often Gansey notices something and gasps, explaining frequencies or soil positions, how this might be a clue.

But as excited as Gansey seems to get over this, Ronan doesn’t necessarily believe that Gansey really thinks that this is the place, that Henrietta is the place at all. Gansey still talks about Henrietta in the transient way he discusses Montana or the UK; another place to gather research, another stamp on his passport, but not a home more than anywhere else. Ronan both hates and is intrigued by this, the way Gansey seems to exist in all places at once, constantly on the move, but a part of everywhere he has touched. Ronan has only ever truly been the Barns and doesn’t want to be much else. He thinks about asking Gansey how much longer he’ll be here—will he be in Henrietta when school starts, will he still be here in a month—but he doesn’t ask, not because he’s worried Gansey won’t want to tell him, but because he’s worried about how easily he will.

Today, the subject at hand is rocks. Some contact Gansey has in Wales offered to do some kind of tests—soil sample or rock formation comparisons—but either way, Gansey has the two of them walking along hilly dirt paths collecting mineral samples and examining rock formations with archaic Welsh drawings. Even Gansey, in his seemingly infinite knowledge of the factors of this quest, can’t claim to be much of an expert on geology, so he leads Ronan along, clutching several gigantic books on the matter, constantly flipping them open to consult, and catching his glasses each time they attempt to slide off his downward-glancing nose.

It’s not long until Ronan tires of this and responds to a more basic urge to climb the rocks instead. He moves to the side of the formation, where he finds a few protrusions that fit well enough in his hands and sidles up the side, twisting around until he’s 20-some feet above Gansey. Even at this short distance, he seems small; Ronan forgets how small Gansey, with his broad shoulders and confident handshake, actually is.

“Boo,” Ronan announces from above, and Gansey—to Ronan’s delight, legitimately startled—glances up from his page. He looks up at Ronan and laughs, a fantastically boy-ish and American thing.

“See anything good up there?” he calls.

Ronan looks down. “Yeah.”

The day’s work is not as fruitful as Gansey seems to have hoped, and he laments it the entire ride back into town.

“It was a stretch, obviously, to hope that there would be some mirroring geology, but there was a precedent about that kind of thing—” he says, ending in some weary statement about how these things happen and he has plenty of time to approach another angle, before bringing it up yet again no matter how much Ronan tries to steer him onto new subjects.

“Look, man,” Ronan says finally after they’re already sitting in Nino’s with milkshakes in front of them both. “There’s no reason to get so worked up about this. It’s just a stupid king, right? A bunch of rocks aren’t going to make or break this.”

Something new—irritation—flashes in Gansey’s eyes, and for a moment, as Gansey’s mouth drops open, Ronan thinks he’s going to be yelled at.

Instead, Gansey shakes his head, placated, saying, “You’re right, probably. What a silly priority to have on today of all days.” He raises his milkshake to Ronan in a mock toast. “To summer!”

Still a bit surprised, Ronan responds in turn.

“So what are you doing for summer, anyway?” Gansey asks. “I don’t think I remember anyone in your family talking about any vacations.”

Ronan shrugs and sips his milkshake. Nino’s always makes them too thick, like lumps of ice cream in a cup, and he prods at it with his straw, willing it to melt. “I don’t think anything.” The Lynches already live in what most would consider a vacation home anyway, so they don’t go on too many as it is. Every few years, Niall jets them off suddenly to Ireland or some other European paradise, but these are always planned on impulse and with no regard for whether his sons are technically off of school. “What about you, are you going home?”

Gansey frowns, twirling his straw through his own milkshake. “I’m sure I’ll visit. My parents are close enough that they’ve complained I haven’t seen them yet, but I don’t think I’ll stay very long. I want to have Monmouth fully renovated by the time school starts, and besides, I’m here for a reason.”

“So you’re going to be here next year too?” Ronan asks. He can’t help himself, not when the subject has slid so neatly into the conversation.

“Oh, I think so,” Gansey says impassively. “At least for fall semester. I wouldn’t have made such an investment in real estate if I didn’t intend to at least live in it for a bit. Though,” he adds, and without realizing it, he taps the edge of the straw on his bottom lip, leaving the smallest bit of milkshake. Ronan somehow becomes even more irritated. “Renovating will be an interesting challenge if nothing else, and I suppose flipping it will pick up a profit anyway.”

“Right,” Ronan says, pushing his unfinished shake aside. “These taste like shit here.”

Gansey finishes the last drops of his own, still oblivious to the smudge on his lip. Ronan resists a sudden, inexplicably tender urge to brush it off. “Really? I’ve always liked them.”

“Well, you’ve only been here a few times,” Ronan mutters and Gansey raises an eyebrow, staring quizzically at Ronan. His thumb brushes his bottom lip clean, and he stares at his finger in slight surprise before grabbing a napkin.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nope,” Ronan says, over-pronouncing the “p.” “Just tired. Maybe I should go home.”

The “I” doesn’t escape Gansey; the Barns are a bit of a drive from Henrietta, but Gansey has never had a problem dropping Ronan off. But usually, Gansey hangs around for hours, until both boys are too tired to justify consciousness any longer and Gansey drives back to Monmouth or just falls asleep at the Barns. Ronan sees a flicker of confusion, and then hurt, across Gansey’s face and Ronan wishes he would argue with him, tell Ronan he’s being an asshole so Ronan can tell him that he’s being one too. He’s so used to love being a simple thing, his parents kissing when his father comes home, his mother fixing his hair, he and his brothers jostling each other on the way to church. Maybe Ronan hasn’t had a lot of friends, but he has had a lot of love. It wasn’t supposed to feel complicated.

Instead, Gansey smiles pleasantly. “If you think that’s best, then.” He waves the waitress over for the check. She’s about their age and flirts with them both a little bit. She’s objectively pretty, dark skin and big curls, so Ronan figures he probably shouldn’t mind as much as he does. Gansey flirts back a little, which somehow bothers Ronan even more than before.

They’re quiet walking to the car.

“Look,” Gansey says, opening the door. “I feel like I said something wrong. I wanted to say I’m sorry and that I think there’s something you ought to know.”

He looks so sincere that Ronan feels instantly mollified. “Look, dude, it’s really oka—”

Ronan’s phone rings. They both look down at it. This is a surprise. Ronan dislikes his phone and so very few people outside of his family have the number. No one, actually, except for Gansey, who is right here, and Henry Cheng, from one regrettable group project. Ronan picks it up and sighs. It’s his house’s landline, which means it’s either his mother calling him for dinner—unlikely, she would just leave it in the oven for him—or Declan nagging him about something. Probably Ronan’s History grade has come in. He grimaces and answers.

It isn’t his mother. It isn’t Declan. It isn’t even Matthew.

“Ronan!” greets a thickly accented voice on the other end. “Thought you’d miss me coming home, huh?” When he says Ronan, it doesn’t sound like the name at all. It’s harsh and lyrical and sounds like “blade” or “fury” or “I’m home.”

* * *

Ronan’s bad mood seems to have vanished as soon as his father called, and Gansey quickly finds himself caught up in the excitement, disagreement lost on the drive over (“You’re staying to meet Dad, right?”) as Ronan speculates on this sudden appearance.

Unannounced visits seem to be Niall Lynch’s status quo as far as Gansey has been able to tell, disappearing for months upon months at a time to emerge suddenly with an array of gifts for his sons and stories that, in Ronan’s retellings of them at least, seem at best unlikely and almost certainly impossible. Gansey isn’t sure what he does for a living either—all he has ever been able to gather from Ronan are mixed comments about business and plenty of traveling abroad, and so Gansey has gotten the impression that the Lynches’ doings aren’t all entirely above board. But needless to say, he’s excited to meet this near-mythical, seldom appearing figure who Ronan seems to adore so much.

There’s a palpable energy to the house, as soon as they walk in—a broad-shouldered, curly-haired, bearded man sitting in the central armchair with the other Lynches in orbit. Aurora fluttering near the arm of his chair, Declan solid and steely beside him, Matthew cross-legged and gazing up from the floor, and Ronan rushing in immediately, all spiraling into a single focal point that Gansey feels drawn into as well.

“Dad!” Ronan should in a burst of childish inhibition that takes Gansey by surprise. He’s also taken aback by the embrace they share, masculine but affectionate.

“Ronan,” Niall says, clasping his son by the shoulders and examining him. “You’ve grown up even more. That’s the start of a beard I think.” Ronan smirks, patting imaginary stubble and ignoring a comment Declan makes about him being lucky if it’s visible by next year.

Gansey stands on the outside, impossibly drawn to it all and yet, after all the time he’s known the Lynches, suddenly unsure of what to do or say. Ronan remembers him, grabbing him by the forearm and pulling him into the center of it all. “Dad, this is Gansey,” Ronan says, as if Gansey bears no explanation, as if his presence in this scene can be justified by his very existence.

Gansey extends a hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Lynch, I’m a friend of—”

Niall ignores this, taking Gansey by surprise by using his extended hand to pull him into a one-armed hug with a clap on the back. “Nice to meet you, son, Ronan’s told me all about you.”

“Oh,” Gansey says, beaming a little.

Dinner is a strange affair. Gansey has been to enough Lynch dinners to know the usual run down, but of course, the dynamic has shifted. Niall regales them all with stories from his “business trip”—with little mention of what business that might be—and Gansey realizes that Ronan has been choosing the least fantastical outtakes in his own retellings. Nevertheless, in the moment, Gansey finds himself doing what he does best: believing.

He sees Ronan in Niall more than anything else, and wonders if Niall’s draw is a more developed version of the magnetic force that drew Gansey so inexplicably to Ronan. Both are mysteries that demand to be solved while taunting with inaccessibility. It’s impossible not to notice how at ease Ronan seems here; Ronan moves through nature and his home like a prince in control of his realm, the same confidence his father seems to bring to each conversation. How stabilizing, how consistent. How oddly familiar.

It’s true that Gansey’s sprawling house in Washington DC has never been the home to him that the Barns has been to Ronan. But a home is many things; a home is a place you don’t have to question; a home is what you gravitate towards before all else. Perhaps Gansey hadn’t understood that, the importance of place when he has always existed in between, and perhaps that means he hasn’t understood Ronan.

When dinner is over, Gansey and Ronan have exhausted themselves playing indoor football with Matthew in the living room, when Aurora dons a fluttering white nightgown and disappears upstairs like something spectral, when Declan disappears to his father’s study to discuss something with his father in serious, hushed tones. Ronan and Gansey head to the nearest surrounding Barn, no longer functioning as a resting place for the cows, but instead outfitted with a few mattresses and cushions in upper rafters. Spacious and quiet, it’s their preferred place to drift off on nights when Gansey spontaneously sleeps over.

Ronan lays down across from Gansey, arms crossed behind his head, looking like an image of contentment. Gansey lies down for a second and thinks of the quiet, thinks of the lightness of insects buzzing outside, and thinks of Ronan breathing not far beside him. He sits up.

He says, “I want to tell you about something.”

* * *

“About what?” Ronan says, a little sleepily.

“About Glendower,” Gansey says.

Ronan feels like he’s already been told enough about Glendower by Gansey to last him a lifetime, but he feels guilty about lashing out at Gansey earlier, so he shuffles up and listens. What Gansey says is different than he expected.

“I never told you why I began to look for Glendower.” Ronan blinks. It’s true Gansey has never told him, but Ronan has also never questioned it. It seems like an inseparable part of Gansey; the part of Gansey that leads him to search for a man with nothing left but magic and old stories is the same part of Gansey that led him to repeatedly reach out to the boy next to him in Latin who couldn’t remember to do his homework.

“It’s sort of personal, I guess, so I talk about it less than I talk about the rest of the quest but it’s… important, I think. Important if you’re going to understand why I need to do this.” Gansey takes a breath. “You know how I’m allergic to bees?”

Ronan nods. This is a matter that’s been worrying him ever since Gansey casually explained the Epi-pen in his backpack. He’s wondered since then if there’s anything he can do, with magic, but no medical knowledge, brimming through his mind.

“Well, when I was little, I was stung. Badly. I was just outside the house of a family friend in DC when I wandered into the woods for a bit.” Ronan can imagine this, a small Gansey bored by the company of adults talking down to him and children who don’t understand him. “I stepped on a nest. It was…” Gansey seems to choke on the next word for a moment, the hesitation of someone who has spoken of an event enough to know how to articulate it, but not yet perfected it. “It was bad. They were everywhere; I must have been stung dozens of times, maybe hundreds.”

Gansey pauses. Ronan realizes he’s holding his breath. “And then I died.”

Ronan has believed a hundred possible things, but this is too much to go unquestioned. “And then you died?”

Gansey shrugs. “It was a near death experience, technically, but I know what happened. I died, and a few minutes later, I was alive. And when I died, I heard a voice that told me, ‘You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and you will live when you should not.’ I had never heard of Glendower before, Ronan. Something real… something magical set me on this quest and I, I have to complete it. That’s the most important thing. That’s the thing you need to understand about me.”

Ronan looks at Gansey, less than a meter away, eyes wide and intense. Ronan thinks of the first nightmare he ever had.

“How old were you?” he asks.

Gansey softens a little. “Ten,” he says in a breath.

Ronan’s heart aches for the boy he can picture from all those years ago. His heart aches for the boy so close to him now. “Man,” he says, and without thinking, lays his hand on Gansey’s shoulder, a small, distant comfort that he finds himself pulling away from as soon as he offers it.

Gansey smiles. There’s something aged and intoxicating about his eyes. “It’s fine,” he says. “Really. It was a long time ago. But as long as you understand.”

He does understand and Gansey knows it, and before long, they lie down in these lonely, distant rafters of the Barns, Ronan still thinking about Gansey and wondering if Gansey is thinking about him, twin heartbeats pounding in this shelter from the world. He hears something shuffle beside him and then a sensation that wasn’t there before. Gansey, eyes closed, his hand gently placed on Ronan’s arm. It’s a small, warm touch. Ronan falls asleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My work for the TRC Winter Rarepair exchange! The title is a reference to "Wolf" by AlicebanD, and a huge thanks to @wlwdeclanlynch on Tumblr and @cosmic_no2 on Twitter for beta reading and putting up with my horrible typos.


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